Perseids Meteor Shower

I went to the a very dark beach with a friend, (east of coney island beach) to watch the Perseid's meteor shower.
A star appeared out of nowhere and my friend and i were both spooked out because it looked as though it was wobbling and flying back and forth,
slowly. It was brilliant, and twinkled ever so slightly like a star.

I'm wondering, can the movement of this star or ufo be explained by something like atmospheric distortion? No other star in my field of vision moved
in the same way, but the movement didn't seem very 'intelligent'.

Was there some real wobble to direction (zig-zag)? Or straight line travel? Last night I caught a satellite about 11:30pm where it reflected pretty
strong moonlight. Was as bright as a star (not that bright) - but travelled in a straight line. I catch these from time to time. Also the ISS or
space shuttle can be very bright on a clear night (about as bright as the brighest star) and travel like a very fast plane (without blinking lights,
though).

Now, I also have seen what I deem a true UFO. Back Sept 24, 2007. Reported to Mufon and NUFORC. It was orange in color, visible slow-spinning (kind
of like an i-beam) and flew faster than a plane, stopped and zig-zagged off into higher elevations. Definitely not a satellite.

Twinkling of stars is due to their distance and light distortions. Planets don't twinkle. But stars don't really move at all - but if you saw
perceivable motion and twinkling, there is a chance that it was a plane at a very long distance away with its landing light turned on - if it was 50+
miles away, it can look like a bright star for a few minutes and also move-around too somewhat as it gets closer.

it was not moving in just a single direction, it was wobbling left and right (from my position, and up and down (back and forward if i wasn't looking
up at it from a lying down position). it couldn't have been a satellite, as the moon set quickly and the object was still there, and we observed it
for over 2 and a half hours. at times in seemed that the movement stopped completely.

it's close to JFK but it was definitely not a plane, there were planes in the sky, and i don't see why a plane would just hang over a major air
traffic space for 2.5hrs +.

I'm going to go to the beach tonight and see if I can get a fix on it's location again. If it's still there, it was a star, if not... well then
sheeet, i saw my first definite UFO :p

As Dulcimer says, the Perseids are not till the 12th August (their peak), but they are active long before this. There is a chance they were
very early Perseids. Did they appear to come from the direction of Perseus if you extended their path backwards?

There are other low level meteor showers active all the time, not to mention sporadic (random) meteors, so seeing 3 meteors in a short space of time
does not mean very much in most cases.

They were probably unrelated meteors belong to different showers, but for future reference, in the case of meteors belonging to the same shower, they
will always appear to radiate away from an imaginary point (actually a small area of sky) called the "radiant", which is usually in the
constellation that that meteor shower is named after. A bit like the arrows on this photo...

...keep in mind however, that those arrows only indicate possible directions of meteors belonging to the Perseids meteor shower in this case. In
reality, meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but they will always travel away from the radiant if they belong to the same shower, and you can
always check if a particular meteor belongs to a particular shower by checking to see if this is the case.

You need to find where the constellations are of course, so download this software and use it to locate your
target constellation.

Meteors that belong to the same shower also usually exhibit similar characteristics, so they are usually the same color and the same speed compared to
others seen at the same distance away from the radiant. This last part is important in determining meteor shower association since the different parts
of the sky that a meteor is seeing in greatly affect the apparent speed of a meteor due to changing perspective.

So after you have seen a meteor and confirmed that it came from a particular radiant, you can further confirm that it was a shower member by observing
the last two aspects of meteor behavior that I mentioned.

Now you'll be able to tell what is what

You can check a list of meteor showers here or a calender (which I always use)
here.

Incidentally, some predictions for this years Perseids can be found here

According to these predictions, we should expect a slightly above average peak of about 110-120 ZHR (that means under optimum conditions) early in the
morning (between about 5.30-7.20 UT/GMT) on the 12th Aug. this year. Don't just watch that night/morning though.

The nights before and after can be fun too! This year the moon is starting to become a problem in the nights after the shower though, so I'd advise
watching the nights leading up to the 11th/12th, and don't forget, the best activity is usually right before dawn when the radiant is high in the sky

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